LAHORE: Pakistan has the potential of earning a foreign exchange of 10 to 15 million dollars per month only by exporting Sanitary Ware products.

While talking to Business Recorder on Sunday, Chairman Pakistan Ceramics Manufacturers Association Rana Shehzad said that if the government ensures uninterrupted energy supply on competitive rates to the industry, Pakistan has the capacity of exporting Sanitary Ware products of 10 to 15 million dollars per month.

He said that export potential of ceramics industry can be evident from the fact that Sanitary Ware is only one item of the ceramic industry which has so much potential. Pakistan’s ceramic industry is also facing challenges such as shortage of technology, taxation and rising cost of energy. “If we have better machinery here, there will be better results. If we have automatic production lines, we can achieve higher production efficiency,” said Rana Shehzad.

He demanded that government should establish accredited laboratory of international standards. He said without having accredited laboratory it is difficult for the local industry to maintain international standards for export. He also said poor quality of raw material and old techniques involved in production has seriously affected exports as well as imports of ceramics. The unavailability of international standard machines also led to inferior production quality and low capacity.

He further said that it is very unfortunate that it looks that government is not serious in solving the issues of a local industry which is providing jobs to the thousands of people. He said that we are not short on labor, but skilled labor takes time to train, the government does need to launch programs to educate our children (on ceramics manufacturing).”

The situation right now is that we are not able to provide the same quality products as compared to other countries. At the same time, our cost of gas, electricity, etc. is very high. In the near future, we will not be able to compete with them if nothing changes.” Rana Shehzad added.

Underscoring the need of enhancing joint ventures with China, Rana Shehzad said that under the framework of CPEC, besides from introducing Chinese capitals into the market, Pakistan can also embrace technology investment from China and adopt the standardized training protocols compared with the traditional apprentice training methods, the standardized training protocols can enable workers to engage with standardized production in a shorter time, greatly reducing the time of personnel training, thus stimulating employment and turning low-end technical talents into high-end technical talents.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023